Developers and designers don't always realize the broad scope of possibilities for the HTML5 spec outside of features like Canvas and the video tag. A few months back, we saw another example of HTML5's flexibility when the W3C
formed the HTML Speech Incubator Group, which will report on the feasibility of voice and speech features for HTML5 in one year. Today, we're already seeing the utility of speech commands, speech-to-text, and text-to-speech features in mobile platforms like Android. There are already experimental, HTML5-enabled speech recognition and text-to-speech applications in development today.

Google Chrome has already built in support for the speech attribute on the input fields. With a microphone connected, you can fill the form fields without the use of a plugin like Flash. Instead it uses Google's voice recognition technology. Pau Tomàs even made a
game that uses speech recognition.

Weston Ruter also used HTML5 audio support with the Google Translate API to make a
text-to-speech app. There are limitations restricting the length of the text to 100 characters, but the HTML5 audio support is great because it allows the web service to be used by client-side web applications.

HTML5 will drastically change the web development landscape when the APIs and drafts are closer to finalization. In fact, the more complete specifications already have been game-changers for today's web developers. The great thing is that more features that are less complete, and probably less recognized right now, will keep bringing a wide range of useful functionality to the standard web for the next decade.